


The Man in the Box

by makesureyouwashyourhands



Category: Back to the Future (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Poverty, Wealth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:40:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26970781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/makesureyouwashyourhands/pseuds/makesureyouwashyourhands
Summary: People said the strangest things about the McFlys. They said that Marty McFly went to bed one night and woke up a different person.Or, the two Martys: how they differ, and how they're the same.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 40





	The Man in the Box

**Author's Note:**

> TW: PTSD, existentialism, imposter syndrome, poverty, gun violence mention, child neglect mention

People said the strangest things about the McFly family. They said George McFly got all of his science fiction ideas from real-world experiences and interviews. Of course, that was ridiculous. Who did he meet that had an alien tell them to fall in love? And who could he have interviewed that had a spacecraft crash into their hayloft? It was nothing he couldn't have thought up himself.

They said Lorraine McFly used to drink when her parents weren't around. That in high school she went around downing whole bottles when the teachers weren't looking. Even more ridiculous, they said Lorraine quit in one day. Impossible, obviously, something in the timeline would've had to shift in order to initiate such a sudden stop to an addiction that took the best of people years to fully recover from.

They said that David McFly used to work at Burger King. People swore they saw his face greet them at the cash register. They said that he just quit one day; decided he was sick of waiting for money to trickle down the ladder and scheduled an interview with a sales company instead. They say he got the job the next day. Insane, of course, no one's hired that quickly. They'd have had to taken a million classes in persuasive speaking to sway someone so easily.

They said that Linda McFly once spent all her time indoors. That she would hide when people were near and that she never spoke to anyone. That she would wait by phones for someone to call her but the second the phone rang she hit the hang up button. Completely out of character! Linda McFly was a social butterfly. She was the pride and joy of the high school debate team while she was still in school. After graduation, she helped Mayor Goldie Wilson run for his second term. Maybe she was shy as a younger child, but it certainly didn't last long!

The strangest thing they said, however, was about the McFlys' youngest: Marty. They said that Marty went to bed one person, and that he woke up different. A changeling, one old grandmother called him. That was ridiculous on principle! A different person, _please_!

Marty McFly had grown the sudden habit of riding his skateboard everywhere he went. Where as he used to drive his prized truck to the house next door, now he really only used it for long trips. When asked why, he said, "It's a great car, but it's kind of a gas guzzler. I'm not gonna waste gas money driving somewhere I could just skate over to. Besides, I like the fresh air." People chalked it up to the teenage high of getting your own car finally settling down. Nobody talked about how Biff Tannen grumbled that the kid ignored the car so much it was like he forgot it was there. Like he wasn't used to its presence. No one talked about how _careful_ he was when he did drive. No one mentioned the way he started panicking about repair bills when it broke down one day, like he didn't have a father who could pay it in a snap.

Marty McFly's music had gotten... _significantly_ better. It was no pushover before, but now it felt like he'd spent hours of every day just _practicing_. As if there was a time when he didn't have anything but his guitar. Jennifer Parker said that Marty first started playing when he was eight. That he'd taken an old acoustic with a missing string out of the garage and started copying the movements of the rock stars on T.V. until his parents borrowed some books on the subject and got his uncle to help repair and tune it. Clearly just something he said to impress her, for George McFly said he bought Marty his first guitar at twelve after he went to his first concert. That he paid for private lessons and that Marty had never even _looked_ at an acoustic before. 

Marty McFly's grades were slipping. It was his senior year, so it wasn't that surprising, but the rate at which they were slipping was said to be shocking. People typically didn't drop from an _A_ average to struggling to keep a _C_ in one so quickly. Mrs. Darcy, the school's calculus teacher, said that if she hadn't been teaching Marty for over a month she would've thought he'd never done calculus in his life. People suspected that he might've been copying answers from another student who'd finally had enough, but that didn't explain the constant questions and frantic notes in every class. The school counselor said that he had quite literally _forgotten_ a year's worth of lessons and would have to drop all advanced mathematics. She blamed it on some psychological phenomenon no one could remember the name of. The news that Marty McFly hit his head so hard he forgot Algebra II made him a laughing stock for weeks. Strangely enough, he was still king of the chem labs, but only the _labs_. The worksheets confused him and he needed a tutor.

Marty McFly didn't go to parties anymore. Not that he didn't sneak out even more than he did before, but parties were never on his mind when he did. Doug Needles said he'd gone chicken, Marty just said that alcoholic drinks tasted like piss to him. That the smell made him _gag_. Understandable, people supposed, good on him for not peaking in high school.

His brother Dave could recall a million incidents that sent Marty into a panic. That time there was a shooting in a wild west movie that had his brother shaking and in tears stuck out the most. Marty used to love wild west shootouts. Now he couldn't look at them, or any kind of gun fight for that matter. The same went for anything to do with hanging. It made Marty clutch and rub his throat.

His sister Linda would hear him whisper in his dreams sometimes. Things about a "Doc" and trains and a Delorean. Things about car accidents and broken hand and a robbery gone wrong.

His mother couldn't help but notice how hard he tried to insert himself between her and any man other than his father. How he always made an effort to steer her as far away from alcohol as he possibly could. How he would look at his hands sometimes, the way he would just stare at them as if a part of him would disappear at any moment.

His father wondered sometimes why Marty made sure to always, _always_ say goodbye to him. Sometimes his son would run down the street just to give him a hug while he pulled out of the driveway to go to work. How he would always look so relieved when he got home, as if there was a serial killer on the loose and anyone who went outside was in danger.

Biff Tannen scoffed at the way the brat tensed up when he was the room. The way he seemed to scan him up an down for... what? Weapons? Chloroform? He waxed the stupid asshole's car everyday. Had his old man scared him with tales about how big bad Biff nearly fucked his dear wife? She was into it! Besides, he couldn't do shit to them now, what with their fancy-ass posh house and endless resources. They could get good lawyers in eight seconds flat.

There was a reason for all this change of course. Marty McFly didn't just get over the hype of having a car, or start putting a few extra hours into his guitar practice, he didn't hit his head and forget Algebra II; he'd never taken it in the first place. He'd gotten his Math credits for graduation and dropped all further studies into the subject; his parents didn't have the time to make sure to push him further. He wasn't used to having a car, or to the idea that he could ever afford one. He really had been playing every day since he was eight, only trading out his acoustic for a brand new electric guitar after making enough money from odd jobs and the help of a "mad" scientist. He'd never gotten drunk in his life because of what it did his mom. The smell was like hell to him. Marty had nearly died by hanging once and by gun at least four times. Marty missed an old friend and had nightmares about a future he didn't even know about until he'd avoided it. He'd watched his mother nearly be... taken advantage of and he'd watched her drown all of her sorrows with a bottle. He'd seen his father's goddamm obituary and had to realize that he barely talked to the man. He'd watched Biff and his family try to kill his own family a million times.

He couldn't say a lot about it. They couldn't know how drastically the future had been altered. They could never realize that he was Calvin Klien, or Marty Brown, or whatever name he told people he had back in '55. They certainly couldn't know how bad their lives all were before he time traveled.

Sometimes Marty wondered what happened to the other Marty. What became of him after he traveled back in time. Did he die? Did he wake up to brand new future too? Did he wake up in Marty's old life? 

He guessed he would never know. Or at least, he hoped he didn't. He hoped other him didn't try to come home one day only to see a fake living his life. That was what Marty felt like sometimes: a fake. He'd asked Doc about it, Doc said that the mysteries of time travel were still largely unknown to him, but that he'd tell Marty as soon as he knew.

The last time he talked to Doc was three months ago, he was supposed to visit next week. If he was still alive, he would be right on time. Because, well, he had a _time machine_.

Jennifer was the only one in current time that knew about his life being wildly different post time travel. Since she'd already been in the machine, he figured he'd tell her the whole story. She updated him on things and people he was supposed to know. Apparently in this timeline they'd broken up for two months because she'd needed space or something. Apparently 1985 B (as they'd chosen to call it) Marty McFly was a bit clingier than he was. He'd won her back by writing a song for her, Marty was surprised this version of him had the balls to actually play the music he wrote. 

Too bad it sucked, in his humble opinion. That was one thing he had on other Marty, he'd gotten a head start with the whole band thing.


End file.
